Its not an easy trail to follow, but at this site you can read for yourself how the Lousisiana Board of Education defines their course of study for science. doe.state.la.us.

But unfortunately, this is for 2008. The BESE has not issued anything new yet as a result of last year’s bill. Oh sure there are plenty of prognostications on how awful it will be, etc — but I’m a skeptical person when it comes to politics and education (or politics and anything). Politics seems to evoke hysteria when there should be boredom. I’ll wait until I see the actual words on actual paper.

Buried in the Science section is the latest guide on teaching Biology. Currently, there isn’t a thing about ID, creationism, or even god (or Huey Long!). Lets see if and how it changes. Its 79 pages long, so I’ll excerpt just one section. Here are the 8 questions a Louisiana student is supposed to know about origins of life as of 2008:

1. Can students identify Charles Darwin and what he contributed to the understanding of science?
2. Can students describe two major ideas Darwin put forth in the Origin of Species?
3. Can students discern why fossils are important to the understanding of evolution?
4. Can students name one example from the fossil record that supports that evolution has occurred?
5. Can students describe radioactive dating? Can students relate how is it used to determine the age of a fossil?
6. Can students describe how DNA and proteins can be used as evidence to support the theory of evolution?
7. Can students provide some examples and explain how natural selection occurs?
8. Can students explain whether or not the antibiotic resistance of microbes is evidence for evolution?